The Recycling Reflex

What if there were something that could create 1.5 million new jobs, reduce carbon emissions equal to taking 50 million cars off the road, cut dependence on foreign oil, increase exports, save water, improve air quality and reduce toxic waste? What if it were low-cost and readily implemented? Wouldn’t everyone do it? At a time of wildfires, droughts and persistent unemployment, wouldn’t it be a centerpiece of the presidential campaign?

A drive to make the act of recycling as automatic as stopping at a red light.

Well, there is such a thing. It’s called recycling. You might ask: Don’t we already do that? We think we do, but most of the time, we don’t. Nationally, only about a third of municipal solid waste is recycled. (In New York City, it’s 15 percent.) And, even when Americans make the effort, we frequently make mistakes that contaminate recyclables — throwing that plate of spaghetti in with those newspapers — so that contents of recycling bins become un-reusable and end up in landfills.

The numbers in the first paragraph come from a report prepared by the Tellus Institute for the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups entitled “More Jobs, Less Pollution” that estimates the impact of raising the country’s recycling rate to 75 percent. Is this possible? To be sure, it would take a sustained national campaign backed by government incentives and regulations, the kind that have proven effective in many cities.
Most people have only a vague idea of the benefits of recycling. When we don’t recycle, we waste huge amounts of water and energy, for example. If you recycle just one aluminum can every day for a year, it saves the energy needed to run a television for 711 hours, roughly four hours a day for six months (not that I’m advocating that much TV viewing). You can do your own fun calculations using this E.P.A. tool.

Moreover, recycling is great for a struggling economy because it is labor intensive. Recall Economics 101: the three factors of production are land, labor and capital. When we recycle, we switch from land (natural resources) to labor. Recycling needs people to collect, sort, process, compost and prepare materials. Even though two-thirds of the nation’s waste goes into landfills, 85 percent of all the jobs associated with waste come from recycling and reuse activities (pdf p.5). Recycling creates jobs that won’t be sent offshore.

So why don’t people recycle more? It’s easy to blame apathy, but often people neglect to do the right thing because they’re confused. Research on behavior change emphasizes the need to make desired behaviors as simple as possible — removing the need to make decisions, so people act reflexively.

That is why one of the most important environmental fixes taking root today is an initiative to standardize recycling labels. It’s only one piece in a complex puzzle, but it’s such a central piece that it seems amazing it’s been overlooked for a generation.

Recycle Across AmericaThe variety of labels currently used for recycling makes it confusing for many.

“For years, with recycling, we’ve been focusing on trigonometry and forgetting about one plus one,” says Mitch Hedlund, the founder of Recycle Across America (R.A.A.), a Minneapolis-based organization that is leading this initiative. She adds: “I go to recycling conferences where the bins say ‘Recycle Only’ and even the people there have to look inside and ask, ‘Should I put newspaper in or just cans?’ If it’s confusing for people in the industry, why would we expect that the general public will do it?”

Recycle Across America A bin at a recycling conference.

Hedlund believes that this problem will not be solved until recycling becomes automatic, like slowing down when you see a stop sign, for all the actors who play a role in the solution — consumers, janitors, building managers, waste haulers. “Imagine what would happen if everyone was responsible for creating their own stop signs,” Hedlund said. “That’s what you have with recycling.”

R.A.A. has developed a comprehensive set of standardized labels that are being adopted by a growing number of American and Canadian corporations, schools and government entities. They include Hallmark; Monsanto; AOL; Cummins; Koch Industries; Johns Hopkins University; the Army Corps of Engineers; the town of Banff, Alberta; the county of Arlington, Virginia, and potentially the province of Manitoba. (R.A.A., a nonprofit, sells its labels at low prices, to sustain itself, and uses licensing fees to provide free labels to schools and other groups and to develop other environmental solutions.)

Recycle Across AmericaStandard labels proposed by Recycle Across America. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Industries often evolve for years before they establish standards. It took traffic engineers decades to standardize road signs. The red octagonal stop sign became the norm only in 1954, almost a half-century after the introduction of the Model T Ford. Years of experiments with diverse emergency response systems preceded the 1967 Presidential commission that led to the 911 standard.

The problem with the recycling logo — the chasing arrows — is that it doesn’t tell you what to do. Recycling has rules, but they vary across companies, schools, municipalities, churches and restaurants. Many places, for instance, have switched to “single stream” or “commingled” recycling, allowing people to throw glass, paper, cans and plastics in the same bin. (They are later separated at a “materials recovery facility.”).

Others have “dual stream” policies. Some separate paper, which is often contaminated by broken glass. Others separate glass, cans or cardboard. More communities are diverting organic waste for compost. And there are recycling streams for electronics, batteries, toner cartridges, yard waste and a variety of construction materials. As a result, the current landscape is a hodgepodge of signs that are scribbled haphazardly and often stuck on bins or walls with Scotch tape. In addition to the lack of clarity, the overall impression is that recycling is low priority.

Hedlund, an entrepreneur who had built her own communications company, recognized the need for standardization after speaking to many people who had the same problem. Corporate sustainability directors said they spent 70 percent of their time just getting people to recycle properly. Companies eager to use more recycled materials in their manufacturing were constrained by supply shortages, contamination and price.

“Our commitment to sustainability includes using recycled materials in our products and packaging, but the availability of these materials is oftentimes a barrier,” explained Michele Whyle, head of sustainability and quality for consumer products at 3M, which is deploying R.A.A.’s labels across its headquarters. One example is recycled polyethylene, a primary source of which is recycled water bottles. As a commodity, recycled polyethylene has an unpredictable supply chain. At the same time, in 2010, Americans dumped 50 billion plastic bottles (and 26 billion glass bottles) in landfills.

Consider Marsden Holdings, which employs thousands of janitors who speak 78 languages and clean over 200 million square feet of office and building space around the country. Marsden is encouraging clients to use R.A.A.’s labels because the color-coding and images, along with training, help janitors do their jobs better, says Chris Norgren, who oversees facility services for the company’s central division. “When our folks know what they’re doing, they work faster,” he said. “Our property management clients are pleased. And it cuts back the criticisms about janitors dumping recycling into the trash.” Marsden’s clients are also discovering that it’s good for the bottom line; the firm is increasingly offering recycling audits. “These huge buildings create so much business waste,” says Norgren. “They save a lot of money when they reduce their waste hauling.” (Waste hauling is taxed at much higher rates than recyclables.)

Related

Another firm that is offering clients R.A.A.’s standardized labels is Veolia Environmental Services, one of the largest hauling and disposal companies in the world, which manages waste and recycling for many Fortune 500 corporations. “We started using the labels this year with a number of accounts and already we’ve seen an impact in the amount of recyclables collected,” noted Kevin Zenkevich, senior director for strategic accounts. “In a few cases, we’ve seen increases of more than 50 percent in recycling volumes.”

Standardization is particularly important for a mobile workforce. NBCUniversal uses R.A.A.’s labels on the sets of its productions in the United States and Canada. Shannon Bart, the sustainability director, said that R.A.A.’s labels helped make recycling consistent across sets — important because contractors move from job to job. “People don’t have to learn a whole new system every time they work on a new show,” said Bart. “We’re helping to spread this throughout the entertainment industry.” Disney Motion Pictures has gotten on board. NBCUniversal has a store on R.A.A.’s site where it can purchase labels customized with its corporate logo.

This September, the National Wildlife Federation, which runs a program called Eco-Schools USA, will be introducing R.A.A.’s labels in 1,000 schools thanks to a donation from Kiehls. In 2010, when a group of schools in the Twin Cities implemented a program using consistent labeling (but not R.A.A.’s labels), recycling increased by 47 percent.

In schools across the country, people are trying to create good recycling programs. They end up inventing different versions of the wheel. “Having consistency community to community and school to school helps educate children about what needs to be recycled,” notes Laura Hickey, who directs Eco-Schools USA. “If you’re a student and you have all the bins labeled a certain way in elementary school and then you go to middle school and it looks completely different, you have to undergo a new learning process.”

Standardized labels alone aren’t sufficient; they have to be incorporated in education and training. But they are a necessary linchpin to establish consistent communications across all media. If the images on the e-mails, fliers, posters, banner ads, TV commercials, billboards and news shows match the labels on the bins, the message gets reinforced. Over time, it becomes ingrained.

Recycling, even if done perfectly, also won’t be enough to address our environmental problems. Deeper changes are needed of course — rethinking how much we consume, where we live, how we get around, how we design products. But getting people to modify behavior in small, positive ways has proven effective in spurring bigger lifestyle changes. It’s a place to start, or in the case of recycling, to re-start. “We need to solve the basic elephant-size problem that involves the general public’s experience and perception of recycling,” says Hedlund. “It’s time for a little simplicity in a very complex industry.”

Correction: July 26, 2012An earlier version of this article misidentified the organization for which a report on recycling was prepared. It is the Natural Resources Defense Council, not the National Resources Defense Council.